Monthly Archives: September 2016

In a recent Vox interview and American Conservative book review, conservative intellectual Samuel Goldwyn shares a bleak view of where American conservatism is going – trying to run up the down escalator of demography. The basic claims of Reaganite conservatism to care about small government, robust international intervention to spread American ideals, and preserving traditional moral schemas have failed to deliver. The last Bush administration delivered America into a profound financial crisis and two terrible wars.

What will replace “movement conservatism”? What is conservatism? While Goldman prefers a negative definition (the greatest political good is not liberty), he does refer to another conservative intellectual, Paul Gottfried. Gottfried has wrestled hard with this question and has a better, more positive answer. If the Left is all about equality, then the Right is all about the affirmation of authority, tradition, and identity.

Three affirmations

Affirmation of identity does line up well with the new Trumpian voice given to white nationalism. So let’s check that off as a clear part of the next conservatism.

Affirmation of tradition certainly lines up with supporting any kind of Christian viewpoint of America, whether shining city on a hill or Puritan Salem. So let’s expect conservatism to stick close to the core cultural center of Western tradition, the Church.

Affirmation of authority is trickier, but I expect that it will mean accepting the place of the state in life. In the days of kings, affirmation of authority meant affirming the royal right to rule. The ideal of small government is really irrelevant to this core conservative concept. In this sense, buying into the use of government previously called ‘big’ or ‘interventionist’ can be welcomed into the next conservative platform.

So that is the next conservatism. American exceptionalism, Christian exceptionalism and friendly to government intervention. If the messaging could drop the racism and anti-urbanism of current conservatism, it could be very successful.

It never will, of course. This is basically the GOP Autopsy Report after Romney’s loss in 2012 plus throwing Grover Norquist under the bus. Nuanced acceptance of diversity and government are “can’t get there from here” positions. Sad!

Sorry, this article is not free to read. Basically, it says French banks are taking advantage of a difference in regulation to become dominant players in the US Treasury repo market. (The data behind the article was sourced from the OFR, my employer.) Dominant, that is, until quarter-end window dressing forces them out.

US banks have to report balance sheets every day, while the French banks only report quarterly. So the French banks play big in the repo market until the last day of the quarter, when they close out all the trades and pretend everything is fine and no, there is no gambling in this establishment.

Not that repo is gambling, it is the exact opposite – about the safest thing you could do with money. Safe, that is, until your counterparty evaporates every 90 days, or has come to rely on repo and then very inconveniently can’t access the repo market because it is quarter-end. Liquidity squeezes can take many forms.

Aligning regulatory regimes across the globe is absolutely necessary in a global capital market. Post-crisis regulatory reform still has far to go, even as people start to forget what all the shouting was about in 2008 (so long ago!) and why can’t I gamble with other people’s retirement funds?